Stobaeus, Volume II

Name: Stobaeus, Volume II
Author: John Stobaeus

Greek and English with an introduction and explanatory footnotes.

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Stobaeus, Volume IIBook II Chapter 2 · II.2.24–II.2.25

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Facing Pages · Branch 36 of 516

Book II Chapter 2 · II.2.24–II.2.25

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Ancient Greek

p. 68

Πλάτωνος

II.2.24

Τὸν δὲ ἀσφαλῆ δεῖ πάντων μάλιστα περὶ τὰς ὁμοιότητας ποιεῖσθαι τὴν φυλακήν· ὀλισθηρότατον γὰρ τὸ γένος.

Τοῦ αὐτοῦ

II.2.25

Ἐγὼ δὲ τοῖς διὰ τῶν εἰκότων τὰς ἀποδείξεις ποιουμένοις λόγοις ξύνοιδα οὖσιν ἀλαζόσι, καὶ ἄν τις αὐτοὺς μὴ φυλάττηται, εὖ μάλ’ ἐξαπατῶσι καὶ ἐν γεωμετρίᾳ καὶ ἐν ⟨τοῖς⟩ ἄλλοις ἅπασι.

Stobaeus, Volume II: Book II Chapter 2

p. 69

Plato

II.2.24

But anyone who would be secure must be especially on guard where resemblances are concerned;⁸⁷ for this is a most slippery kind of thing.⁸⁸

The same author

II.2.25

But I know that arguments which construct their proofs from probabilities are impostors;⁸⁹ unless one guards against them, they deceive one thoroughly, both in geometry and in everything else.⁹⁰

87.Sophist 231A. “Secure” and “slippery” preserve the physical contrast in ἀσφαλής and ὀλισθηρότατον. The warning concerns the danger of being misled by resemblance; it does not say that every comparison is false.

88.Wachsmuth explains that this excerpt and II.2.25 survive in the Eclogae manuscripts F and P at the end of Chapter 1, a position he judges mistaken. His edition places them here, after the material recovered from the Florilegium. Their position is an editorial reconstruction, not a newly supplied passage of Greek.

89.Phaedo 92D; Simmias speaks. In the dialogue he is reconsidering his account of the soul as a harmony. Here εἰκότα are plausible considerations offered as the basis of proofs, and ἀλαζόνες calls the arguments pretenders or impostors. The warning preserves the distinction between plausibility and demonstration.

90.Wachsmuth supplies the article ⟨τοῖς⟩ from Plato’s text. English expresses the resulting phrase naturally as “in everything else,” without an added standalone word to bracket. The supplied Greek article remains visible opposite the translation.

About This Reading Edition

The complete surviving text of Stobaeus’s second book, through II.46.22, in Ancient Greek and English, with an introduction and 1,541 explanatory notes. All forty-six chapter headings remain, including the notices for chapters whose texts are missing.

Historical Text and Translation

Greek: Curt Wachsmuth, Ioannis Stobaei Anthologii libri duo priores, volumen II (Berlin: Weidmann, 1884), printed p. 1 and pp. 3–264. The supplied edition preserves consequential editorial signs, reconstructed joins, qualified attributions, and missing-text notices. English translation, introduction, and explanatory notes: Diotimos Editions, 2026.

About Diotimos Editions

This historical edition credits Diotimos Editions as its English translator.

Rights

Stobaeus’s ancient Greek work and Wachsmuth’s 1884 edition are in the public domain. The supplied English translation, introduction, and explanatory notes are published with the site owner’s authorization.